Wicked Unrest

Knackered.

It's #SixOnSaturday time again.  I, for one, wasn't ready.

The endless harvest, pets needing their jabs, political melodrama back home, CFS giving me stick - no way I'd post this week.

Then El Punko asks if he can take my SoS photos in order to get some practice with his new camera.

No rest for the wicked, it does seem.



1.  Harvest continues.

Last week, you saw all the peppers lined up in the shed after being picked early to protect them from the wind.  I've been bringing them inside as they develop colour.  Between them & the daily gathering of maters, the windowsill is always full.

The red CA sweet pepper has a symbiotic twin.

2.  Cucumelons.

I learned on Twitter from Rob Smith (@RobsAllotment) that cucumelon form tubers that can be lifted & stored over winter.  Mine are still producing at a great rate, although a few leaves have turned colour.  I suspect it'll be next month before I think about digging them up.

Cucumelon on the bed spring trellis.

Continuing the standard set by the California sweet pepper . . .

Cucu-weird-shape.

3.  Autumn berries.

They say lots of holly berries means a heavy winter & our trees have lots of berries, but they're going a little bit funny on us.  Hopefully none of them will make it into tiny, spiky holly saplings.

What's happening, Mizzy HollyTree?

There's also a volunteer snowberry in the garden.  Like the holly, I love their berries, hate their propensity to spread.  There's just the one this year, but give it time.

Snowberry caught in a web.

4.  Changing foliage.

In the field where we walk the dogs, the chestnut trees (buckeyes, to me) have started to change colour.  Along our street, however, the trees are holding their own.  Not so, for the flowers . . .

Columbine on the cat grave starting to fade.

. . . or the shrubs.

Gillenia getting a bit orange around the edges.

5.  Sedum, at long last.

My sedum with the purple stems & leaves (name buried somewhere out of reach at the moment) bloomed in July.  This great precursor of summer's end - Autumn Joy perhaps? - has finally got some colour.

Sedum & the oft-spoken of, crooked cherry tree.

6.  Last Rose.

The only roses in my current garden were grown from seeds I scavenged during a birthday trip to Paris a few years ago.  They've all bloomed, but not vigorously, so this last blossom really pleased me.

Last of the year's blossoms.

To me, winter, spring & summer are all single purpose.  Autumn, on the other hand, is complex, incorporates birth & death.  It's got my vote for best out of the 4.

Now for a snooze.

And that's my Six for the week.

I'm so glad El Punko wanted some photography practice.  Equally glad you stopped by for a gander.

Make sure to run over to Mr P's for links to other blogs.  And if you've got a garden to share, he's got guidelines.

See you again, soon!

Signs of Life - Six on Saturday

Tree of Life applique.

Last week, the rain left long enough for us to play catch-up in the garden.

This week it's a day of rain, a day of fog, another of rain, nary a blue sky.

While there's no sun, there are signs of life.

Sometimes signs where it seemed no life could be.




1.  Verbena bonareinsis

The animal trails take precedence in my garden designs - it reduces the risk of having a favourite plant beaten into submission.  After learning Mlle DoodleFace's paths in our last house, I dug out a new flowerbed.

What I didn't take into consideration was, chasing garden intruders veers a DoodleFace off the beaten path & into the fast lane.  Which is how two of my sleeping verbena bonareinsis got flipped head over heels out of their autumnal bed.

I stuck them into pots & hoped for the best.

We survived a Doodle rampage.

And the best happened.


2.  Chocolate vine.

After this plant arrived last year, it essentially did nothing but grow one thin spindly stem.  A pretty stem, but no buds.  Allowances have to be made for the young, so when we moved, it got invited to come along.

To be honest, after seeing photos of other SoS chocolate vines this year, all with tons of buds, I thought the worst about this fella's potential.  But I did tack its chicken wire to the shady side of the new potting shed.

Today, its waving new tendrils won it a place in this week's six.

Buds!

It wasn't until I looked at the photo on my computer that I saw the buds.  Out I ran to check it in real life & yes, my vine is loaded with buds.  If you look near the bottom of the roof board, we got 'em.  Buds that start there & run all the way down.


3.  Pear tree.

Last year (its first year with us), this pear tree bloomed a little, but nothing to write home about.  Its pollination buddy, an Asian pear, failed to thrive, so there were no pears at our house.

Louise Bonne of Jersey being hugged by a fig tree.

As you can see, we now have tons of buds on this fella.  The nursery replaced the Asian pear, which has plenty of leaf buds but no flowers.  Will it be another pear-less year?  Only the Shadow knows.


4.  Gillenia trifoliata.

This is one of my new shade-loving plants.  I'd never had a gillenia before, but it's supposed to be a nice sized shrub that'd fill a corner with delicate foliage & pink flowers.

When it arrived as a little shrivelled brown stalk in a pot, let's just say it inspired doubts.

Pink profusion.

But the little brown stalk grew itself some lovely russet leaves.  It lives.


5. Laburnum

Two gardens ago, we had a laburnum at the end of the front lawn.  It self-seeded like blue blazes, spotting the boundary hedge with yellow blossomed chillen.

Hedge laburnum in bud 2 gardens ago.

I rescued one of the smaller hedge volunteers & potted it up, but it appeared to've died before the end of last summer.

As you know, no one gets left behind, so the pot came with us.

Laburnum dead stick.

And now it has leaves!  Did ever a scraggly stick growing in dirt, inspire so much joy?  (All the time, says you.)


6.  Afterlife.

I don't know about your dearly departed, but ours don't always rest in peace.  When a box fell out of the closet in the middle of the night, my response was - Duly noted - then back to sleep with plans to check it in the morning.

Box w/Mlle DoodleFace for gauge.

The Big Z is my late mother, a master quilter who continued to teach quilting into her early 90s, even though she'd moved into a nursing home.  The same move that brought this box to me all those years ago.

Here's the pattern with swatches pinned to it.

Jacobean Tree of Life.

Isn't that something?  Even in black & white, it's amazingly beautiful.  It has a comforting balance to it.

Besides the pattern, the box is filled with little bags of hand cut templates labelled in her writing, thread & needles & markers . . . yet the kit's not whole.

She'd appliqued the brown stems, pinned on the green leaves.  But there's no fabric for the blossoms or fruits.  As if she were interrupted in her work at the beginning of spring.

The kit unfinished.

Which wasn't my mother's way of working.  Before the pattern was traced, the templates cut, before a single tiny stitch got sewn, she would've picked out her fabric.  All of it.

But it is the way nature works, sending us spindly stems, dried sticks in the dirt, slumbering verbena with their roots in the air.  We wait for signs of life, nurture them, & subsequently nurture ourselves.

And that's me done talking until next week.

The way she left it.

But there's more to be shared over at The Propagator who hosts this meme.

Be sure to check out his comment section where SoS bloggers have left links to their own Six on Saturday gardens.

See you next week!

Pedal to the Metal

Out of the gates & running like the wind.

It's #SixonSaturday time, guys.  Six things happening this week in my still-new garden.

Last week, it was all wait wait wait for the stars to find their proper alignment before big things could happen.

This week, everything's slipped into gear.  I do believe we took advantage of it.





1.  Shed update.

The potting shed arrived without instructions.  Several phone calls & a few emails later, they sent us a list written in what quite possibly was Middle English.  Ultimately, my budding relationship with the shed provider broke down & we were on our own.

Despite this, by Day 1, we got the floor in place.  As we stood admiring our work, I heard a noise & turned to find myself eye-to-eye with a DoodleFace on top of the wall.  Our Artful Dodger dog had unlatched 2 doors in the house & climbed the wall to share in our joy.

End of Day 2.

The end of Day 2 coincided with the end of the week & all 4 walls in place.  Just before dinner, the missing parts to our storage shed arrived, so next week it'll be duelling sheds for my Six.


2.  Securing the perimeter.

Our back garden has six levels to it.  We took the property on the condition that a 5' fence be erected around the first 3 levels to prevent the continued adventures of Mlle DoodleFace.

This wasn't done (thus the Doodle escape in #1), prompting a 3 week discussion about what constitutes 5'.  That disagreement ended with the consensus that 5' is in fact, 60".

New discussions have commenced over who owns the 4' fence between our property & our neighbours.  The neighbours have several shrubs & small trees along that fence, but there are places where a well oiled Doodle can slip through.

The first breach is next to a small, shady raised bed to the left of the back door, previously loaded down with BioBizz.  Shifting the bags uncovered debris from some long forgotten re-roofing.

Fern bed

Once the area's cleared, a woodwardia unigemmata fern will go in the far corner, & a gillenia trifoliata on the other side, with some smaller plants at the front of the bed.  As a temporary measure, I'll stab a few bamboo sticks next to the fence to fool Mlle DoodleFace into thinking it's 5' tall.

Yes, I'm a dreamer.


3.  Herb garden.

The bed on the other side of the steps gets plenty of sun.  Since the back door leads into the kitchen, this little bed's a great place for the herb garden.

Future herb garden.

Excavating the coping here initially caused a fright.  No bones, but the unveiling gave an impression that under the grass, the whole area'd been paved.  However, eventually the fork sunk up to its armpits in the soil, so herb garden, here we come.


4.  Keep your enemies closer.

When the Beast's snow melted, it showed the prevalence of ground elder in our new neighbourhood.  For such a neglected garden, ours has surprisingly very little.  The bit we do have seems to've originated from under the contested boundary fence.

My first experience with ground elder was 4 gardens ago when we lived in the 17th century priest's house. 

In spring, a triangular bed between a gravel path & an apple store turned yellow with aconite.  Once that died back, the ground elder came along, bloomed a white carpet, then got mowed down by the landlord's gardener.

Sounds very civilised except the ground elder, not content with its triangle, colonised all the beds in that garden.

The Doodle, the kerria, & the ground elder.

Considering the relatively short time we'll be here, I've decided to conserve energy by embracing our ground elder.  Or at least, maintaining a truce with it.

As luck would have it, the ground elder grows at a gap in the neighbours' side.  I dropped in a couple of kerria that I brought with me, thinking they're big & ugly enough to take on ground elder.  Even though they can be thugs, I'll probably stick in a few more to give the impression they're a hedge.

Hopefully, adding some bad tempered bamboo stakes here will deter a certain canine from absconding.


5.  The Pile.

If you remember, the site of our potting shed was previously occupied by a survivalist's shed.  I didn't mention at the time that The Pile occupied another part of that level.

The Pile.

The person who removed the survivalist shed wouldn't take The Pile because it consisted mostly of garden waste.  That undoubtedly makes sense to more knowledgeable persons that myself.  People who also understand badly written Middle English.

Because of this arcane rule, my pots've spent 3 weeks sitting on the lawn.  This week, a certified Pile Remover came, so the Great Pot Migration has begun.

Potted forest, garlic, & weight reduction.

All the garlic, Bast's weight reduction chamber, & about half the potted forest've been moved.  If I want my pears to cross pollinate this year, I better shake a leg & reunite them.


6.  Front garden.

I do have a front garden, but until this week it's been filled with pots, & latterly, shed parts.  This state of affairs causes anxiety in the tiny OAP fairy woman next door (who shouldn't be confused with the RtHL BossyBoots).  OAP fairy woman periodically emerges for updates & offers of tea.  She's relieved that work's begun to expand a bed.

At present, my plan incorporates This Thang growing under the window.  It looks like a passion flower to me, which is strange because it survived the Beast.  Could there be hardy passions at our new house?  Do hardy passions even exist outside works of fiction?

We shall see.

This Thang. 

The proposed occupants of the expanded bed include a spirea & some roses, all languishing in their pots.  The roses were grown from seeds found in a graveyard in Paris.  Hopefully I can propagate them, because it'll take nerves of steel to leave those babies behind.

There's also a peony that, with 2 of its mates, I dragged from the Angry Village (3 gardens ago).  The 2 mates grew happily in the very next garden, so were left there.  The last of the trio - wherever I've planted it, however much I've cossetted it - rewards me with peony pouts.  Maybe this bed'll put a blush in its blossom.

In the space beween the plants I brought with me & This Thang, I'll plant some of my colourful veg in lieu of garden flowers.  I'll let you know how the OAP fairy takes to them.

Well earned rest.

And that's our busy week.  It's felt good to make progress, limited though it may be.

Now that you & I've caught up, be sure to head over to The Propagator to see what he's been up to.  In his comments, you'll find links to all sorts of Six-on-Saturday folk hailing from 4 continents (at my last count).

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope to see you next week.